


She's fine, I'm fine

by telekinesiskid



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Animal Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Demonic Possession, Drowning, Gen, Murder kinda, Physical Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:31:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2478236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid/pseuds/telekinesiskid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dipper covered his ears and closed his eyes. He gasped for breath, his heart pounding, feeling sick to his stomach. He hadn’t been thinking – in his desire to save his sister, he’d given her a fate much worse than death. Even in trying to fix his mistakes, he still ruined everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Desperation

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Она в порядке, я в порядке](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4860500) by [Iprit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iprit/pseuds/Iprit)



> Yoooooo 'bout time I got back into writing adult content for children's shows I love hehe - enjoy

The way he’d laid her out now – she could almost pass for asleep at a glance. But the longer he stared, the more unnerved he became. It was instinctive to expect that her chest would rise and fall, even just a little under her thick sweater. He’d spent so many nights just watching her breathe.

He’d tried CPR for, he didn’t know how long. He filled her lungs with his breath, he pumped her heart, he listened. He filled her lungs, he pumped her heart, he listened. This went on and on until he had no breath of his own left to give her, until his hands were sore from the effort of trying to keep her alive. He’d had no guarantee from the start that there even was a chance she could still be alive. She’d been underwater for a long time. People were supposed to spit up all the water, weren’t they? Like in the movies?

His eyes started to tear up again. He’d swung from careful, measured indifference back to overwhelming sadness and self-blame. She hadn’t even wanted to check out the cool lake he’d found – she wanted to go to town and do some activity he hadn’t even stopped to hear about before trying to bribe her out to this stupid lake. He was her brother. He was supposed to look out for her, he was supposed to protect her from selfish boys, from hateful girls, from anything that could’ve gone wrong in her life. He didn’t protect her; he endangered her. He killed her.

Yeah, that was it. He killed her.

Of all the great mysteries Gravity Falls had to show him, Dipper had never expected to be shown a mystery quite like death. He hated Gravity Falls. He hated summer. He hated lakes. He hated siblings. He hated mysteries.

He’d been sitting with her body for hours now. They’d been sitting so long that their clothes were starting to dry in the sun. He picked up Journal 3 once again, which had thankfully stayed dry and safe in his vest, and morosely turned the pages he’d read a million times, one after the other, trying to find an answer. He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t do anything without his sister. He couldn’t even spend more than a day away from her without feeling like he’d lost something integral. What was he supposed to do?

He wiped away his tears, he stoned his heart. He turned the pages quicker, looked harder. There was no way he was going anywhere without his sister. In Journal 3 was bound to be something about resurrection, there just had to be. It dealt with almost every paranormal and mythical entity ever conceived – why wouldn’t there be at least a one-page exert on undoing past events, reviving the dead, or making deals with those who could?

He stopped on Bill Cipher’s page and slowly set down Journal 3. This wasn’t the first time he’d done this. He must’ve flipped through that Journal at least 10 times now, and each and every time he hesitated when he came to this page, his gaze lingering on the Latin incantation. The only thought that kept him from blurting out those words was that there would be another way, a safer way. But the sun was starting to set.

And he was getting more and more desperate.

“Goddammit,” he whined. He looked at his still sister and his heart plummeted. “Mabel… Mabel, what do I do…” He put his face in his hands and sobbed. “I need you, Mabel. You’d… I don’t know what to do. I can’t stay here forever. I… have to undo this. Somehow. _Please…_ ”

He peeked at Journal 3 from between his fingers. He stared at the rough sketch of Bill. That eye, always watching him.

The sun was almost set now. He should’ve been home already. He should’ve been sharing a frozen pizza with Mabel and throwing checkers at her when she cheated, laughing with her, talking with her, living with her…

He felt himself growing darker. His emotions were constantly changing, like stormy weather, like a tumultuous flight. His posture and expression changed with him. He smoothed his hands hard over his cheeks, his rounded, haunted eyes, under his cap, and clutched at his hair. He moved into himself, he curled until his neck and spine hurt.

“Everything is different now...”

He was so close to uttering that Latin. Part of him wanted to shout it out and scream he’d do anything to have her back. Part of him wanted to just deal with the fact that his sister died, and deal with it in a healthy manner that didn’t involve trying to invoke Machiavellian demons whose services came at a terrible price that hadn’t even been discussed prior. He rocked with his inner turmoil.

He knew on some level that there was only one option. Of course he was going to agree to Bill’s terms in the end, regardless of what they were. He only had to wait until his fear and agony and loss undid his good senses and forced him into a series of decisions he would inevitably regret.

The sky was dark, his skin pricked with the cold. And Mabel felt much, much colder than he thought death would feel like.

He shakingly picked up the Journal 3 and began to read aloud the words he was explicitly told not to read aloud, just a page over. It was so dark – he was reading mostly from memory. “ _Triangulum… entangulum… Veneforis dominus ventium… Veneforis… venetisarium_.”

He braced himself. He braced himself for a few long seconds before he decided that it hadn’t worked. He wondered if he was pronouncing the words correctly – he had taken Latin classes at school and had done pretty well on his speech, but maybe it had been too long. Maybe he didn’t have the right set of equipment to summon Bill with. Maybe Bill just didn’t want to be summoned. His last resort had failed him.

“I’m sorry, Mabel,” Dipper whispered, crawling over and laying down beside her, one arm around her. “I’m so sorry…”

It was silent for a few moments before he became aware of a faint buzzing, like the hum of electricity. Even through his closed eyes he was aware of something glowing bright and yellow right over him.

“Hiya, Pine Tree!”

Dipper pulled himself up and squinted his eyes, shielding them from the harsh light of Bill’s shape. He looked around and saw that the landscape had a monochromatic tint, though it was hard to see without any sunlight. Mabel looked even more lifeless without any colour on her.

“Hmmm, I wonder how I can help you!” Bill said, sarcastically. Dipper got to his feet, shivering from damp clothes and cold, sunless air, and watched Bill carefully as he hovered over his sister’s body. His huge eye moved between her and him, gauging their situation without any explanation necessary. “So how’d you kill her, Pine Tree? _Ha ha ha ha!_ ”

It struck more than a couple of nerves within Dipper, and he rubbed at his eyes to mask any evidence that he was crying. Even though he had a good reason. Even though Bill probably already knew. “I’m not in the mood, Bill. Just… bring her back.”

“And what will you do for me, Pine Tree?”

“Anything, I’ll do anything you want. Please.”

“ _Aaaaanyyyythiiiiing?_ ”

Dipper almost hesitated. But one look at his still, monochromatic sister was all he needed to start pleading. “I promise I’ll do anything, Bill. I don’t care what it takes.” He put out his hand sadly, knowing it was going to be the worst mistake of his life. Or, at least, it would’ve been if his sister hadn’t died on his watch. “So let’s make a deal already.”

Bill sized him up with his one eye. His little black twig hands scratched at his point and stroked roughly where he might’ve had a chin, if he was human. “ _Hmmmmm..._ Tell you what, Pine Tree. Since you’re having a hard day and being no fun – what with your dead sister and all – I’m willing to cut you some slack. I’ll revive your sister completely free of charge!”

Dipper’s hand dropped. He was overwhelmed with confusion. “Wh… Why? That’s not… like you.”

The talking triangle laughed, his light shuddering with him. “You don’t know what I’m like, Pine Tree! I can be quite generous when the mood takes me, you know! You just happened to catch me on a good day!”

He didn’t say anything more, leaving Dipper to think he should say something akin to gratitude. “Lucky for me, I guess… Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Pine Tree! Why don’t you just take a little nap with your sister’s corpse there, and by the time you wake up, everything will be back to normal. You’ll have woken after a usual day of exploring and a usual night of pizza and checkers. It will be as if you’d never let her die!”

Dipper twitched. He tried to smile. He was starting to feel like maybe his decision had not been such a bad one, ignoring all inklings that he was being duped. He lay down on the ground and wrapped his arm around her, holding her close. He wanted to feel her presence in his arms again, he wanted to feel her chest heave up and down again.

He took one last look at Bill, floating horizontally above him, who flashed him a thumbs-up. Then he closed his eyes and slept.

\-------

He woke up in his bed. Early morning sunlight was pouring in through his window, casting an illuminated triangle in the centre of his floor. He jerked into full consciousness upon seeing it, pulling himself up and staring at it, ensuring that it wasn’t Bill. But then he heard his sister yawn. Turning his head, he saw her roll over and pull the blankets up over her head. On the floor between them were empty, grease-stained pizza boxes, and a checkers bored with the pieces scattered as far as underneath her bed.

He couldn’t believe it. It had worked. Bill had been merciful. Bill had helped him fix his mistake, completely free of charge. He’d given Dipper another chance not to mess things up.

Within seconds, Dipper had thrown the blankets off of him and run straight at sister. He fell on top of her, evoking a loud, surprised cry, and he began to weep with the relief and the euphoria as she began to chastise him and shove him for tackling her. It hurt, her blows – she didn’t know her own strength sometimes – but he was so, so happy. He fought her for one of her hands and clutched it so desperately, like he had just five minutes after her time of death.

“ _Bro!_ ” she screamed, finally managing to pull him up until they were face to face, and restrain him. “What the hell is going _on?_ ”

He laughed through his blubbering, wiping his leaking eyes and nose on the back of his hand. He was shaking so hard from all of the emotions coursing through him – he felt dizzy and weak. “Mabel,” he choked out. “Mabel, I love you. I love you _so much._ I would _never_ let you get hurt. I will always protect you from harm. You don’t want to go to the lake? Fine! Let’s never go to the lake! Let’s do whatever _you_ want to do from now on! I promise it will all be OK.”

She laughed, slow and awkward. “ _Wow,_ ummm… Quite a dream you must’ve had, to be saying all that stuff…”

He pulled her into a hug and held her so tightly she began to make only half-joking strangled noises. “You’re my sister and I love you. We’ll be together forever. I’ll never let you go.”

“ _Awwww!_ ” Mabel’s hands wrapped around her brother. She patted him twice. “That’s so nice of you to say, Pine Tree!”

His eyes opened. Panic jolted through him like several hundred million bursting nerves. He grabbed her arms and pushed her away, eyes wide and mouth quivering. “That’s not funny, don’t call me that,” he snapped. “Don’t call me that…”

She was smiling an awful lot. She smiled and widened her eyes. “What’s wrong, Pine Tree? Aren’t you happy to see your Shooting Star alive and well?”

Dipper didn’t know anything but primal fear in that moment. He was wired to run, but he could only move backwards without looking away. He watched as the whites of his sister’s eyes yellowed, the pupils become slits, the grin becoming a permanently clenched and menacing fixture on her face. He fell off the bed, landing on his back, and continued to crawl backwards, back and back until he was up against the wall. Because that’s where he wanted to be more than anything now – _back_.

Mabel began to laugh. Except that it wasn’t Mabel’s laugh anymore. “I suppose your sister would’ve wanted you to come up with a new name for me, like ‘Bipper’, eh Pine Tree? Let’s brainstorm! Hmmmm… Bable… No, _Mabill._ _Perfect! Ha ha ha ha!_ ”

Dipper covered his ears and closed his eyes. He gasped for breath, his heart pounding, feeling sick to his stomach. He hadn’t been thinking – in his desire to save his sister, he’d given her a fate much worse than death. Even in trying to fix his mistakes, he still ruined everything.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably warn everyone that, although it was initially unplanned, there is in fact a dead Waddles in this one - and it's not pretty either :( I am very sorry about that.

He’d stopped wearing his cap. He only had to be called “Pine Tree” one more time before he'd pulled it off and buried it amongst the dozens of other caps in the Shack’s shelves. Without his cap, nothing was holding his curly hair down, leaving his impressive birthmark exposed. Bill started to address Dipper in the manner that he was accustomed to.

“You know, Big Dipper, it took me a while to cough up all that water that you’d left in her lungs. There was a _lot_ of water in there – all sloshing around like in a canteen! Also, you _may_ have broken some of her ribs. I don’t know – I’m not an expert on human anatomy – but there’s a lot of _pain_ when I raise her arms.”

And so he did exactly that. He shakily raised his arms with a hiss and a twitch, but his grin intensified.

“ _Oh_ , yeah… There’s _so much_ pain there.”

He lowered his arms only to raise them again, and again, and again.

“You must have broken them when you spent an hour giving her – what did you guys call it? C-B-R? That thing you humans do when you rhythmically punch another human’s chest and kiss them. By the by, Big Dipper – remind me to get some of this ‘sleep’ every once in a while, will you? Exhaustion is one kind of pain I _don’t_ want to get in on!”

\-------

He’d stopped eating properly. He hadn’t really contemplated just how negligent Stan was until Dipper found himself stuffing his face full of pickles and mustard at two in the morning. Well, it wasn’t so much that his temporary caregiver was negligent; Stan probably just expected that he could take care of himself. That he could be independent and self-sufficient enough to feed himself when he needed feeding, and to eat the right kinds of foods too. But Dipper only ever ate meals with his sister.

As he sat at the table, glumly swirling chilled pickles in a jar of mustard – which wouldn’t have been nearly as appetising if he wasn’t already starving – he stared at the empty chair across from him. He was thinking an awful lot about Mabel, and he didn’t want to. He didn’t know how to fix things. He didn’t know if he ever could.

He bit down hard on the pickles, crunching them slow in his mouth. They were starting to get warm, he noticed. He looked up at the wall-mounted clock and found that somewhere between opening the fridge and finishing off the last pickle, he’d lost about an hour and a half. He didn’t question it, didn’t fret like he would’ve done normally. He’d lost all sense of time-perception now. He really should’ve kept a watch on him. Maybe set up a few alarms to keep him in touch.

He washed out the jar with warm water and put it in a recycling bin that was already overflowing with Stan’s stinking “rich people water”. He looked around for something else to do to pass the time. He was tired, but there was no way in _hell_ he was going to go back to the attic and sleep mere inches from that demon. He didn’t feel safe in that room – or any room – alone with Bill. So, he went behind the counter, found one of Wendy’s magazines, and started reading. He didn’t absorb any content or even bother to comprehend most of the teen-speak; he only made it through a couple of pages before he felt himself start to drift off.

He awoke to the sound of a door slamming, his body going from relaxed to alert and ready in a matter of seconds. He peeked his head up over the counter to see Stan straightening up his merchandise, checking his re-stocking lists. Stan jumped and yelled upon noticing him. “ _Jesus_ _Christ_ , kid! You’re gonna be the death of me. What the hell are you doing behind there?”

Dipper shrugged, dragging himself up to his feet. “Just… reading.” He held up the magazine he’d read, not even realising that he was about four years too young and the wrong sex to be the target demographic. He set it down and hesitantly walked over to his Great Uncle. “Um… Gruncle Stan?”

Stan wasn’t paying him any attention but he still asked disinterestedly, “What is it, kid?”

Dipper checked that no one else was around and lowered his voice. “H-Has… Mabel… seemed kind of… strange? Lately?”

Stan’s answer was prompt. “Kid, your sister _is_ strange. What we define as strange is considered _normal_ when it comes to your sister.”

“That’s not what I mean. Uh…” He checked again that they were still alone. “Does she seem _stranger_ than she… usually is… is what I’m asking.”

Stan let out a loud, irritated groan. “She’s _always_ doing dumb impressions, creepy expressions, and all kinds of stupid things that get her hurt. _She_ thinks she’s being cute, but she’s mostly just being an annoying brat. I just ignore her.”

“But, Gruncle Stan, she’s…”

“Look, kid.” Stan turned to face him and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. He looked fairly stern. “It’s just her personality, you know? You’re the… bookworm nerdy type, and she’s the crazy one – with a huge thirst for theatrics. She’s just going through her creepy stage where she pretends she’s an alien that has no idea how to tie shoelaces. It’s _not_ strange to me… Unless she _is_ acting strangely, then…” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t know, puberty or something? ‘Bout time you kids hit puberty, probably.”

“Stan…” But Dipper couldn’t say anything more. He could only stare hopelessly at his Great Uncle and wish that he’d just understand. But the only way he could make his Great Uncle understand is if he admitted to the fact that he’d let Mabel die. “Yeah, I… guess,” Dipper conceded, sighing.

He could feel himself start to cry again so he quickly excused himself from the Shack before his Great Uncle got him to sweep the place clean. He kept his head down and his hands in his pockets as he started to walk into the sun-lit woods, with no sense of where he was going or what he was doing. He walked and kept walking until he stepped on a curious bit of bright pink wool, probably from a sweater Mabel knitted for her pet pig.

“Oh, God,” Dipper groaned, kicking at the ground in frustration. In all of this mess he’d completely forgotten about Waddles, who was largely cared for and kept by Mabel. He had no idea where the pig would even be; he hadn’t seen or heard from him in days. He sighed, choosing to honour Mabel’s memory by caring for her pet, whom she loved dearly, and started to turn back towards the Shack. Mabel wouldn’t have wanted her pet to be as lonely as Dipper was.

He must’ve lost all sense of direction too, in addition to his regular sleeping and eating and time-keeping habits, because he got lost getting back. He didn’t happen upon any signs nailed to nearby trees directing passers-by to the Mystery Shack. He didn’t see any sort of landmark any which way that gave him a sense of where he was. It was probably the farthest he’d been out from the Shack in a while.

He wasn’t worried, and he kept walking. It wasn’t as if he was in any huge hurry to get back anyway. He walked until he noticed a sound – something that sounded like a distant whipping buzz. Curious, he tried to trace it, additionally coming upon a stench so foul that he had to hold his shirt up over his nose. He saw what the buzzing was now; it was a swarm of flies, gathered around something sitting behind a bush. Figuring it must’ve been a dead squirrel, he picked up a sturdy stick and leaned over the bush to inspect whatever it was that was attracting so many flies.

He dropped the stick. He staggered back, his hands flying to his mouth for fear that would actually vomit all down his front. Tears pricked at his eyes as he howled woefully into his hands, shaking his head, wishing desperately that it was something else, some other dead pig behind there. But he hadn’t just witnessed an animal that had died with dignity – he’d witnessed a butchering of his sister’s best friend.

Those images would haunt him for the rest of his life. There had been so much blood. The mix of soggy and dry entrails seeping out of the pig’s stomach, not cleanly cut open, all resting upon a bed of dark red grass. Dipper hadn’t gotten a good enough look to see all of the gory details, but he could imagine. Organs that had been physically removed and… placed outside of the pig’s body. An intestine wound around his neck, like a noose. Or perhaps it was meant as a fashion accessory. Only human hands could have done this work.

Dipper already knew who had done it. There was no question. And the fact that Bill had used Mabel’s hands to mutilate her own beloved pet – the fact that Waddles had blindly followed her tense smile all the way out into the unchartered woods, nothing but complete trust and affection for his owner…

It was too much. Dipper began to cry, loud and proper, into his hands. He physically shook with pain. Everything was just too much. It was all his fault. If Mabel could see him now, she’d have never forgiven him. He would be dead to her. And the thought only made him cry harder.

“Hey there, Big Dipper!”

Dipper spun around so fast he fell backwards. He had no idea that he was being followed. His face formed an expression of unutterable horror as he began to scramble away. Mabill only grinned back, braces shining in the sunlight. He hadn’t put a band in her hair, he’d worn one of her sweaters inside out, and he hadn’t coordinated her colours. He was doing _everything_ wrong, and Dipper couldn’t believe that what was so _obvious_ to him was so indistinguishable from reality to everyone else.

Mabill directed his attention to the pig. “Still there, huh? You know, the damn thing kept me up _all_ night! Always squealing and snorting and making all kinds of funny noises. Boy, did I think _those_ noises were funny before I cut him up! Ha ha ha!”

Dipper thought he was going to be sick. He turned onto all fours and tried, ineffectively, to slow his breathing.

“Didn’t occur to me until later that he was probably just hungry. Still! I thought it was about time I familiarised myself with some basic anatomy. Would’ve gone for a human, but you guys tend to get all moody when it’s one of your own kind. Kinda like how you went crazy after you killed your sister. Good times! Hm?” He frowned at the way Dipper was positioning himself in anticipation of being sick, and went to stand over him. “What are you doing, kid? Need any help?”

“ _Get away from me_ ,” Dipper managed to seethe through his breaths.

Mabill recoiled, like the response was completely uncalled for. “ _Geez,_ kid. What’s got _your_ knickers in a twist? …Oh, right – it’s probably just the dawning realisation that you failed your sister yet again, and that you couldn’t even keep this unevolved life-form she called her ‘friend’ safe from harm’s way. Yeah! That’s probably it! Welp!” Mabill gave an encouraging smack on Dipper’s back and then took his leave. “I’ll see you back at the Mystery Shack, Big Dipper!”

Once, and only once, Dipper was certain that Bill was a fair distance away from him, he collapsed onto the ground. He thought for a long time about the possibility of never getting back up again. But he’d been too caught up in his own loss and depression. He needed to be stronger. He couldn’t be selfish; he had other people’s safety to think about now – Gruncle Stan, Soos, Wendy… He had to…

But it was so difficult.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell you how much FUN it is to be writing again - and this kind of material too gosh so fun
> 
> Erm tw at the end for those who don't like burns? (physical burns I mean, not like, sick burns... just to clarify)

“ _Dude,_ ” she laughed, relishing in her repeated victories. _“_ I am just _owning_ you today! Hya!” She managed another combo over him, dealt another few kicks before he could even stand up again, and before he knew it his health bar was empty. The screen slowed and the letters “K-O!!!” sprung up and echoed in loud technicolour across her television screen. Wendy put a triumphant fist in the air with another hoot. “ _Yes!_ ” She turned to Dipper just in time to see him put down his controller. “Dude, what gives? You’re _so_ off your game.”

“Yeah.” Dipper had been staring at the screen, at the mass of “K-O’ed” pixels that had just represented him, when Wendy gave him a nudge. “Sorry,” he said, turning his head up to her and smiling. “I guess I’m just really bad at this game.”

“It’s no different than in the arcade, man – and you’ve _beaten_ me before. You’re just not trying.” She stopped and titled her head at him. “You don’t wanna play?”

“No, no!” Dipper hit some back buttons and started flipping through a range of potential candidates to represent him in the next fight. “I do want to play. Maybe it was just a lousy character.”

“It doesn’t really make much of a difference, you know…” She could see on the screen that he wasn’t exactly in the process of choosing a new character. He was just flipping through the character stats absently, rhythmically even. She looked at him again. “C’mon, man. If you don’t wanna play then that’s cool. We can just do something else. You don’t have to sit through a game you don’t like just to impress me or whatever.”

Dipper sighed. He’d been to her house to hang out with her one-on-one a dozen times, and this was the first time he wasn’t deliberately trying to impress her. He wasn’t thinking about that at all.

He watched as Wendy left the bed and kneeled in front of her television. She popped the disc open and put it back in its case. She surveyed a few other games she kept. “Ok, so. What next?” She set out a bunch of cases for Dipper to consider, but his eyes just glazed over them. “We’ve got RPGs, some FPS… I still haven’t finished _Everlasting Symphony_ , if you’re interested. The way the characters move is so freaking _stilted_ – it’s great.”

“Yeah, sounds great.” He watched as Wendy gave a grandiose gesture to the range of games she’d especially set out for him. He faltered. “Oh, uh… I don’t mind. You pick.”

Her face made an expression that Dipper couldn’t read, and he physically began to feel ill. “Dude, really?” she asked.

Dipper had no idea how to interpret that. “What?”

“Well, it’s just… _you_ said you wanted to come here and play video games with me. And now, all of a sudden, you don’t wanna play anything?”

There was an uncomfortable silence between them as Wendy packed up the cases, chucking them into a shelf under her television with more carelessness than when she’d last put them away. Dipper just sat there, at the end of her bed, feeling like he was wasting her entire day. He wanted to just sink below the floorboards and for her to forget he’d ever inconvenienced her.

“You’re right,” he murmured, head down. He couldn’t meet her eye when he felt so below her. “I’m… Sorry, Wendy. I’ll just go.”

He slid off her bed and headed towards the door when Wendy caught him by the leg. “Well, don’t _go,_ ” she laughed. She shifted back to lean against the side of her bed, stretching her long legs out in front of her. She smiled and patted a space on the floor beside her, and Dipper moved there obediently.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

She took a proper look at him – at his downcast eyes and his joyless smile. “Are you doing OK? You’ve seemed really down lately.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. And… I’ve noticed that you don’t hang out with your sis anymore.” She stopped and listened to Dipper sigh, watched hints of his turmoil pierce through his carefully composed indifference. “So… What’s up with that? Did you guys get into a fight or something?”

Dipper wasn’t about to tell Wendy anything even remotely close to the truth. He couldn’t quite believe, in that moment, that he’d come this far without a cover story. He shrugged. “Yeah, we’re just… fighting a lot. Growing up and all. We’re… just… not as close as we used to be.” All this he said, as he still cried each night over the loss of his sister. “She’s… she’s changed. You know? And there’s a lot of fighting, so we don’t hang out anymore.”

Wendy listened and nodded in what she thought was complete understanding. “I get it, man. My brothers and I are _constantly_ fighting, even over really dumb stuff. And we might not hang out as much as we used to when we were kids, and we may say or do some stuff that we regret later, but we’re still family, y’know? At the end of the day, we still love each other. We still go hunting and camping together, and spend holidays together, and we find some common ground to work with. I know it can be hard when people change on you all of a sudden and it feels like you’ve lost them completely, but… She’s still your sister. And you’ll find soon enough that you haven’t _really_ lost her.”

Dipper brought his knees up to his chest and curled over them. He took deep breaths, trying so hard not to lose his composure in Wendy’s presence. It was all such beautiful advice. And it was all so useless and irrelevant. “Thanks, Wendy,” he said, resigned. “Thanks a lot.”

\------

He returned home shortly after that, after Robbie V. called to ask Wendy to the arcade in town. Normally Dipper would’ve been devastated that she would abruptly end their time together to be with Robbie instead, but today he was almost relieved. Nothing was happening. She was too polite to say she was bored, and he was too afraid to just go home.

She waved him off at the front door, he apologised one last time, and then he started the slow walk back to the Shack. When he first started walking, the sun was there and the air was warm. By the time he’d come home, the sky was a washed-out cobalt blue and he was shivering from the cold. He didn’t know how it happened. It was like he was the saddest time-traveller in the world; every minute that he felt pass was an hour in the physical world.

Gruncle Stan was on the couch in his wifebeater and boxes, watching television without the lights on and drinking a can of Pitt. Dipper hovered in the doorway for a moment, hoping to distract himself with whatever Stan was watching, when his Great Uncle spoke to him without removing his eyes from the screen. “Kid, you’re late home. Dinner’s in the fridge but there’s not much left.”

“Yeah, OK. Thanks. I’m not really hungry right now, so I’ll have it lat-“

“Does this look like a commercial break to you, kid.”

Dipper felt a twinge of anger at Stan’s dismissal, but he didn’t feel like nursing that kind of fire today. He was too exhausted, in every way possible. So he ate a small, cold plate of food over the kitchen sink, washed it under some cold water, and then headed upstairs. He walked slow and gentle, so as to not let the floorboards creak underneath him, to his bedroom in the attic. Even if he wasn’t going to sleep there that night, he at least needed to grab a few of his things. He steeled himself and pushed open the door.

Mabel was on the floor, sprawled out and still, like she had been that day. Dipper approached carefully, not knowing what to think, not knowing if this was just another psych-out Bill was trying to pull, or if he was actually hurt. Bill wasn’t dressing like Mabel anymore; her body was mostly in an ugly combination of both Dipper and Mabel’s clothes. Her feet were in his sneakers, she was wearing her skirt with his shorts under it, and she had a Christmas-themed sweater on. Her hair was tangled and tousled on the floor. The air around her smelled like she was in the process of decomposing. Or, perhaps, Bill just wasn’t aware of showers.

It seemed safe enough, in that moment. Dipper stood over his sister’s body to see that, at some point, make-up had been crudely applied to her face, and then crudely wiped off again. The bags were deep and purple under her eyes; Bill was probably only just succumbing to the urge to sleep. The floor didn’t look like a comfortable place for it. He was going to be so sore in the morning.

It was so stupid, but Dipper actually thought about bundling his sister up in his arms and putting her in her bed, so she could sleep properly. But he raised a hand and slapped himself on his cheek. It _wasn’t_ his sister anymore. It hadn’t been his sister for a couple of days now. He had to stop sympathising with _Bill_ , because that’s who it was now. It wasn’t Mabel. It was Bill. Not Mabel. Just Bill.

He kneeled down beside his sister’s body. Poorly applied bandages adorned her legs, hands and face – barely covering the number of emerging abrasions and bruises. God knows what he was doing to her all day, while he was out of the house, trying to run away from all this mess he had created. If Bill didn’t treat… the “vessel” more considerably, then it wouldn’t be fit to sustain him for very much longer.

“Why are you doing this,” Dipper whispered, voice wobbling but tone stern. It was just loud enough that Bill might hear it. “Why did you… steal her body?”

Mabill’s yellowed eyes opened so suddenly that Dipper jolted with fright. Mabill still looked exhausted, out of touch, but he was putting on such a show. He grinned and the teeth didn’t even look like hers anymore. A couple of them were missing. “Do you remember what you begged me to do, Big Dipper?”

“I asked you to bring her back to life!”

Mabill slammed the back of his head hard into the floor and unleashed a hellish laugh that sounded absolutely _nothing_ like his sister. Then he turned his wide, burning eyes back onto Dipper. “ _No_ one can revive the dead, Big Dipper! At least not in the way that you expect. Even for me – that’s impossible!”

Dipper felt so overwhelmed with emotion – like he needed to be wrung-out. He grabbed Mabill by the sweater and yelled in his face. “ _You said it would be like nothing had happened! Like..._ ” He was starting to choke up. “Like… she’d _never_ died! You _promised!_ ”

“What do you think I’m doing right now?” That grin faltered, but only for a second. “ _Geez!_ I do _so_ much for you because I like you – I go _so_ out of my way for you, and this is the thanks that I get! To be ignored and then yelled at? Some brother you are!”

Dipper let the sweater go. He withdrew and started to blubber into the heels of his hands. “S-So… she’s… really…”

Mabill’s eyes followed his every move, unblinking. It was so much worse than just one eye. “…Really actually dead? Yeah! Sorry, Big Dipper – was that not obvious? I thought you knew I was just entertaining your ridiculous delusion!”

He was right – it was obvious. It had been from the very beginning. But it still felt like he was losing his twin sister all over again, and he couldn’t stop it. He balled.

“Awwww.” Mabill pulled himself up to his feet, twitching and creaking and shuddering. He couldn’t even make her look human anymore. She moved like a zombie. “Don’t cry, Big Dipper. This is why I’m here in your sister’s body, after all! To help ease the transition.”

He said it so measuredly and clinically that Dipper laughed through his tears. It was a joke, a huge fudging _joke_. Bill had only made everything so much worse.

“You know that you can’t possibly face your great uncle and your parents and tell them that your sister is dead because of you, so you got _me_ ,” he pointed to himself and winked, “to cover for you. And you know how it’s all going to play out from here – right, kid? Your sister goes insane and kills herself! With no obvious connection to you! When really it has _all_ to do with you! Isn’t that such a _great plan_?”

Mabill’s smile stretched with the anticipatory validation. But Dipper was in no state to give it to him – even if he had, by some stretch of the imagination, lost his mind and agreed that it was a good idea. Bill wasn’t helping him, not at all, not like he thought he was. He was only putting Dipper through all that pain, twice. With no one else to depend on, no one else to help him through his grief and guilt.

“Right?” Mabill pressed. “I’m doing it all for you, Big Dipper. So you can get off ‘scot-free’ as you humans say! Hey – this favour might even turn out so good that I’d be willing to do more favours for you in future!”

Dipper couldn’t physically say that he would _never_ consider doing that in future. But he raised such a miserable and furious expression to Mabill that the demon actually backed down.

He announced loudly, “I can see that you’re not doing too well – psychologically speaking – so I’ll just leave you alone for a while, how’s that?” He turned towards Mabel’s bed and sat down, cross-legged, and amusedly looked over his surroundings. Then he noticed the lamp shining beside him and smiled wider. He put out a hand and touched the palm to the hot glass exterior. “I’ll just be over here, trying to acquire a ‘third-degree burn’ – I hear it’s somehow _less_ painful than the second one! You humans sure do make funny arbitrary categories for things!”

Dipper stared with silent, jaw-dropped horror as Bill clutched the glass, so tight it might break under the pressure, and smoke started to rise from the rapidly pinkening skin of his sister’s hand.

It was like Bill was punishing him for not being _grateful_ for his punishment.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. I just had to update a bunch of tags for this fic.
> 
> WARNING: this chapter contains UNDERAGE SIBLING (INCEST) RAPE. Rape is a horrible thing to experience - and it's even more horrible when one or both parties are unable to give consent (underage), and even more horrible when the perpetrator is someone you are close/related to. And, presumably, it's even worse when that perpetrator is actually a dream demon who took over your twin sister's body. 
> 
> SO I have tried to adequately capture the trauma of this experience. It's a very sensitive topic and I have tried to give it as much respect as possible. I completely understand if this is a bit too dark for some people - I am so very sorry D: please be safe everyone!

Mabill had stopped working the front of the Shack. For all that Stanford Pines remorselessly worked his employees – even those who were family – into the ground, with little compensation, he couldn’t ignore the complaints of his customers. He’d personally received three in the first two hours of the Shack’s morning, and it was starting to stem the flow of purchases. For some reason, people found it unnerving to buy goods off a young girl whose hands and face were covered in bandages. And she was still smiling.

Dipper had been told he wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as his sister, and so had been handed a key to the supply closet and shuffled into the backrooms, out of the public eye. He’d been sweeping the floors and cleaning the windows and enjoying the non-stressful monotony of menial tasks, when he heard Stan call Mabill off the register. He turned his head sharply towards the door as they both entered, and Mabill gave him a wink.

Stan shut the door behind them so no customers could overhear. Then he looked down at Mabill with crossed arms, sizing him up. “Kid, I’ve received a lot of complaints about you this morning. Your attitude is great, but you still look like you’ve just come from a war. People might think I’m some kind of… abusive slave driver or something. So you’re gonna have to switch jobs with Dipper.” Stan moved his eyes onto him. “Dipper. You hear that? You’re on register.”

“But…” Dipper looked between his great uncle and his sister’s possessed vessel. “Gruncle Stan, can’t Wendy do it?”

“She called in sick, kid, and so did Soos. I’m a little understaffed at the moment so I’d appreciate it if you quit your whining and just do as I ask, OK?”

Dipper resented being told that he whined, but any indication of that would’ve been interpreted as whining, so he let it go. He put down his cleaning supplies and began to make his way out the door when Stan caught him by the collar. “Mabel, sweetie. How’d you get to have so many bandages anyway?” Dipper grimaced as Stan’s grip tightened on his shoulder. “Your brother hasn’t been roughing you up, has he?”

Mabill could’ve gotten him into some serious trouble. In fact, Dipper expected it. But, to his cautious surprise, Mabill denied Dipper’s involvement. “Thanks for asking, Gruncle Stan. Well you see, I’ve been embarking on a variety of sensory escapades lately! Each and every scar represents a treasured experience and a new lesson!”

Dipper stared. He had no idea how Bill was doing it, but he was imitating her voice so perfectly that it gave him chills. And yet Bill still sounded just like himself.

Stan frowned and raised an eyebrow at him. “…What?”

“Ha ha ha! It’s perfectly simple, Gruncle Stan.” Mabill held up his heavily bandaged hand. “This is from yesterday! I learnt that it takes a long time to reach a third-degree burn using only a lamp.” He gestured faint blue and purple shades around one bloodshot eye. “This is from ten minutes ago, when I told a customer that I’d punch my eye if he gave me his watch!” He made no gesture to any particular part of him when he said, “I’ve also learnt that I cannot hold my breath underwater for more than fifty-seven seconds!”

Dipper felt like he’d just been punched in the throat.

Stan looked at a loss for words. He rubbed his head and stared at the disturbing, sadomasochistic child standing before him, and it only grinned back wider. The whole scenario was a little bit beyond him. “Uh… OK, I’m gonna ask you to… stop doing all that. Right now. Before I call your parents.” He turned another suspicious, eyes-narrowed look onto Dipper. “Are you sure it wasn’t your brother? You’re not covering for him?”

“Stan, I didn’t do any of that,” Dipper argued. “You heard… Mabel. It wasn’t me.”

But Stan didn’t stop to really look at the exultant, maniacal smile on Mabill’s face and the pleading desperation in Dipper’s. All he saw was no scratch on Dipper and every scratch on his sister. His expression made it perfectly clear to Dipper that he didn’t believe either of them. “Get back to work, both of you,” he ordered gruffly, taking his leave.

Before Dipper went to take his post at the register, he made certain he locked up every cleaning product that would’ve killed Mabill upon ingestion. It was ridiculous – ridiculous and unfair. Bill had lied to him; he was still being suspected of hurting his sister, even when it was impossible to do so anymore. If his sister died now – again – then he still would’ve been blamed for it.

Summoning Bill Cipher had been all for naught. The only thing he’d gotten out of the “free deal” was unnecessary, drawn-out misery and suffering.

\------

At some point during the day, Stan noticed that Mabill had disappeared. Still haunted by their earlier conversation, Stan had been in no huge hurry to find him. Instead, Stan had delegated those neglected cleaning duties back to Dipper when the store front was empty, and again when the Shack was closed. Dipper didn’t finish cleaning the place until late into the evening, past dinner, when Stan finally decided that he’d done a good enough job.

Dipper knew that he’d finished his cleaning hours ago – the place was spotless, so clean that he could eat a dinner that wasn’t waiting for him off of it. Stan was just keeping him there as punishment for crimes he didn’t commit. Or, at least, crimes that Stan wasn’t supposed to know about.

Exhausted and sore and hungry, Dipper crawled upstairs, hoping to just get some sleep on a comfortable bed. He went into the attic and was thankful that Mabill was nowhere in sight. Dipper threw himself on his bed, which he’d barely touched in days, and buried his face deep in his pillow. It was so soft and welcoming. He could’ve fallen asleep right then and there.

But then the door squeaked and swung closed behind him, too swift to be blamed on the draft. He didn’t fall asleep soon enough.

“Hiya, Big Dipper.”

Dipper didn’t want to acknowledge that he was there. But Bill spoke to him as if he was hanging on his every word.

“Sorry for leaving you with all that work today – cleaning things is so _boooriiiiiing._ I’d _much_ rather talk to the customers! Humans can be so inadvertently entertaining! It’s funny – the _conclusions_ they jump to when they see a smaller human’s battered meat sack.” He paused for a moment. Dipper had hoped that he was done, but Mabill was only just getting started. He felt him approach his bed. “You know what I discovered today that’s somehow _just as good_ as pain? I think it’s better known as the _opposite_ of pain.”

 _Pleasure,_ Dipper thought automatically. He pulled himself up and turned his head to tell Mabill to leave him alone, but he faltered. It was dark, so dark in the attic. There was barely any sunlight now coming through the triangular window. He could only faintly see his sister’s body – her bare arms and legs a pale blue amongst the darkness, the shadows of her face black and eerie. She looked like a walking corpse and Dipper fearfully scrambled to put the lamp on.

Mabill looked more alive in this light, but only slightly. His sister looked unkempt, unclean, and… damp, for some reason. Like a body that had just been salvaged from a river. No sweater, only a shirt. No pants or socks, only a short skirt.

He was still smiling. And it occurred to Dipper that Bill had always been smiling – he just never had a mouth until now to smile with. It was distractingly unnerving to think about.

Mabill shakingly walked forward until he was standing at the foot of Dipper’s bed. He brazenly crawled onto the mattress, onto his knees, setting them unusually far apart. Dipper swallowed hard, very alert – as alert as exhaustion would allow – and very aware that there was nowhere to back into. He was already pressed right up against the wall.

Mabill hitched the skirt up just high enough for Dipper to see that he wasn’t wearing any underwear. The pads of Mabill’s thumbs and index fingers pinched the fabric between them – it looked so delicate and yet so intimidating, the way Mabill was holding that skirt up.

Dipper didn’t immediately avert his eyes. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before – there were little boundaries between him and his twin sister when they were younger – but the way Mabill was showing it off was making him feel intensely uncomfortable. Dipper didn’t shut his eyes soon enough to miss Mabill reach down to the slit between his legs and rub himself in such a way that his body quaked. Dipper wasn’t looking now, but he could still hear it – those small milky, wet sounds and Mabill’s breathy laughter. He couldn’t believe this was happening. It was his _sister_ – and it also wasn’t, but it was _his sister._

“It’s throbbing…” Mabill kept up a running laugh through his slow, quiet words. It didn’t sound anything like his sister, and it didn’t sound anything like Bill either. “It’s been a while since I had body long enough to feel its primal desires affect me. And I’ve never had one of _these_ before. I had no idea it was self-lubricating!”

Dipper couldn’t look him in the eye, couldn’t watch what he was doing to his sister’s body. He kept his eyes firmly off to the side and murmured angrily, “don’t touch my sister that way.”

Mabill threw his head back a little and laughed, almost hysterical, pitch heightened as his fingers worked faster in tight little circles. “I thought we went over this, kid – _I’m_ your sister now! This body is mine and I can do with it whatever I please! And _this – gah!_ ” He was rubbing so hard now that his knees were starting to sink. It looked like he was physically melting into the sheets. “Th-This _really_ pleases me… Say.” He managed enough composure to smirk at Dipper. He retracted his sticky, glistening wet hand and offered it up to Dipper. “Wanna lend a hand?”

Dipper thought he was going to be sick. _His sister._ “No!” he cried, more incredulous that he even had to say _no_ than the question itself.

“Wanna lend something else?”

“What… Wait, _no!_ ”

But Mabill moved fast, and he had her strength to overpower him. Dipper thrashed and twisted and kicked but he still held back where Mabill didn’t, having strong emotional reactions whenever he stared into her face – and he didn’t want to validate Stan’s suspicions that he’d harmed his sister. Dipper still ended up exactly where Mabill wanted him – lying flat on his back, with his wrists pinned above his head, and Mabill’s knees on either side of his hips. Dipper watched it all happen with wide-eyed, unblinking horror.

“Bill, _wait! Just please stop th- mmphf!_ ”

Mabill stuffed one of the socks Dipper had been wearing deep into his mouth. Dipper gagged on it but there wasn’t anything he could do without the aid of his hands. “Sorry, kid, but your cries of protest are killing the mood. Ha ha I’m just kidding – they totally enhance it! But I’m going to need you to be quiet from now on. Wouldn’t want to catch the attention of your great uncle now, would you!”

Dipper wavered in his struggles to get free, feeling an overwhelming sadness sweeping over him. He didn’t even know whether to cry out for help anymore. He didn’t doubt that Mabill could turn it all around in some way and have him framed him as the abusing sibling. But he didn’t know which would’ve been worse to his great uncle and his backwards assumptions; finding out that he sexually abused his sister, or finding out that he was sexually abused by his sister.

Mabill looked positively ecstatic. “C’mon, Big Dipper – let’s see how _Big_ your _Dipper_ really is. Euphemisms!”

Dipper started to fall back into helplessness, into a haze of silent, sobbing regret. It was still all his fault. None of this would be happening if he had just done the right thing – the hardest thing in the world at the time but a _picnic_ compared to this – if he had just carried Mabel’s body home and faced the consequences. If he hadn’t pressured her into going to some stupid lake with him.

It was hard to focus on what was being done to him. He didn’t have the psychological capacity to ruminate over his past mistakes and to actively protest every move Mabill made. He lay there, aware of his shirt pulled up, his pants pulled down, Mabill getting into position and lowering himself onto Dipper, Mabill making low, affirmative hums, Mabill making lewd comments beyond his physical years as he rolled his hips. But Dipper was choosing not to experience it, not to feel it. At least, not mentally. His consciousness dissolved, his mind detached itself from the here and now. And Mabill continued until the body was done, taking Dipper’s only defence for submission.

Dipper was so tired. And he missed his sister.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woah thank you all for the kudos! Ok so last chapter - let's get Dipper's suffering over and done with

He couldn’t go on like this. It had only been a week but it had to stop. It had been a week and Bill had made no indication that he would be leaving Mabel’s body anytime soon.

Dipper didn’t even have the energy to cry anymore. He didn’t feel the same active distress he did just a couple of days ago; now he felt like his body was stacked full of cold, hard rocks, weighing him down, slowing him down.

He sat in the dark of a disused, musty linen closet. He was hiding – from everyone. He lived in the walls now, overhearing all that people said about him when they didn’t think he was around. He’d heard them all talking, at some point or another. He’d heard Mabill being interrogated about the increasing number of wounds on him, he’d heard Wendy tell Gruncle Stan that Dipper is the one who’s hurting Mabill, he’d heard Soos voice his thoughts loudly and to no one in particular that Dipper was a horrible person, and an even more horrible brother.

That was enough for Dipper to think that he should never face them ever again.

But the worst part was that it wasn’t even a very good hiding spot. Mabill still knew exactly where he was. He was starting to think that Mabill knew exactly _everything_ ; even while inhabiting a human body, he still saw things happen around him, even when he wasn’t always present. And Dipper would always press himself hard against the back wall whenever Mabill came through that corridor, slowing his upbeat walk until he stopped right outside the closet door. He rattled and batted the door, laughing that increasingly inhuman laugh, and Dipper would brace his feet firmly against the old door, trying to keep it shut.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t stay in that closet forever. He had to stand perfectly still and let his family and friends yell at him, when they caught him sneaking around the Shack. He had to use the facilities and eat something and he couldn’t always avoid running into Mabill, who seemed to be waiting for him around every corner.

He almost walked straight into him, and his recoil was so fearful and clumsy that Mabill just stood there and laughed. “Easy there, kid! Didn’t mean to startle you! Just wanted to check on you – see how you’re doing.” He grinned remorselessly, like he knew exactly how Dipper was doing. “You’ve been hiding in that there closet for a few days now. What’s the deal with that? Do humans hibernate or something?”

Dipper stared at him, eyes dark and full of loathing. “I’m waiting for you to leave. Like you _said you would._ ”

“What makes you think I’m not going anywhere?”

“It’s been a week!” he cried, the words just bursting from his mouth. “A whole week I’ve had to put up with you ruining my life and ruining _her_ life!”

“She doesn’t have a life to ruin anymore, kid. Besides, _you,_ ” he jabbed a finger so fast at Dipper’s face that he narrowly missed his eye, “already have that particular honour. You’re the one who drowned her, remember! Take a bow!”

He rubbed at his cheek where he’d been jabbed. It had hurt. He stared at her nails, how they’d yellowed and splintered in such a short amount of time. He’d left no inch of her unmarked. “Y-You’re ruining her body then, and everyone is blaming _me_ for it. You’re _not helping me so leave_!”

“All in good time, kid. I’m not leaving just yet _._ To tell ya the truth, I’m actually kind of enjoying it here! Everything is just so new and _exciting_! I wanna have a bit of fun before I have to go back to the Mindscape. It’s not every day you’re offered a free vessel, you know!”

Dipper felt the rocks in his body grow hot, smouldering inside him. There wasn’t a lot of his sister left to see in the possessed carcass standing before him. He didn’t find himself hesitating when he brought his hands up and enclosed them around Mabill’s throat. “ _Get out of my sister._ ”

Mabill was still smiling, but it was more uncertain now. It grew a lot more uncertain the more Dipper tightened his grip. “Hey, kid, think of how this will look to Stan and your friends if they were to come here right now. Then you may as well have never summoned me!”

“I should _never_ have summoned you! You still don’t _get it._ ”

“What don’t I get now?”

“You don’t get how much you’ve just… ruined _everything,_ and _hurt me,_ and made it all _so much worse-_ “

“ _Kid_ ,” Mabill interrupted in an urgent, strangled voice. “Put a cork back on those bottled emotions, would you? You’re holding me _too tight – gugh!_ ”

Dipper so wanted to just do it, to not give in, to finally just get him out of her. But he couldn’t. He panicked. It was too real – her face was turning red, her eyes were watering, her hands were desperately clawing at his iron grip. He suddenly saw in this body his sister and nothing else, and he let her go, watching with pain and horror as her body limply toppled to the floor. She didn’t get up. She didn’t even draw a breath to replace the last one he squeezed right out of her.

Dipper felt like he’d just swallowed the whole Shack, the whole universe. He held his head like it was threatening to fall off. He couldn’t do this again. He just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t-

“ _Ha!_ ” Mabill threw himself up into a sitting position and pointed, mouth agape in pure delight. “ _Gotcha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!_ You really thought you’d killed her again, didn’t you, Big Dipper!”

…He couldn’t do it. He didn’t know how to feel. He couldn’t feel relief, he couldn’t feel disappointment. He could barely stand anymore; he was shaking from head to toe. His body had never felt so abused before. His mind had never felt so overwhelmed. He didn’t know what to do. He just turned on heel and began to walk away.

Mabill called after him, “ _You’re not getting rid of me that easy, kid!_ ”

But there was no getting rid of Bill, ever. Even when Bill was out of his sister’s body, he could never stand to look at that glowing, one-eyed triangle again, and all the memories he represented. He’d changed everything between them. And there was no _destroying_ Bill, or surely someone would’ve done it already. If Bill wouldn’t leave, then Dipper had to go. And he didn’t care where.

\-------

He’d been considering running away. But he didn’t know where he could go. Wendy or Soos probably wouldn’t let him stay with them, knowing what they are convinced he did to his sister. He didn’t think he’d make it very long if he tried to live in the wilderness. His parents were on vacation and his home would’ve been empty, even if he had managed to get a bus all the way back. Besides, his home was full of pictures of him and Mabel. It wouldn’t have done him a lot of good to sit alone staring at them all day.

He considered maybe telling someone he could trust to believe in his story. Both Soos and Wendy knew that Bill existed and was terrifying, but there was no way he could disclose all of the information without it being relayed back to Gruncle Stan. He didn’t know why, but Dipper felt like letting Gruncle Stan know what happened would’ve resulted in them never speaking again.

He considered maybe just writing it all down, perhaps in Journal 3 as a sort of awful anecdote about never invoking the sadistic wrath of dream demons, no matter how badly you messed up. If he could just write it all as a narrative, maybe some things will become clear. Maybe some questions will be answered. Or, maybe it will just remind Dipper how goddamn _deluded_ he was to ever think that he could ask Bill Cipher for his help.

His thoughts weren’t exactly full of hope and positivity these days, but they were only occasionally too dark to deal with. It occurred to him, but he didn’t think he could kill himself. He was too scared. He was scared of pain, he was scared of oblivion and the unknown. He was terrified to think that when he died, Mabel would be there, cold and distant and unforgiving as she told him she was _disgusted_ at what her brother had let Bill do to her body. He was even more terrified to think that when he died, he joined the Mindscape, doomed to an eternity with Bill’s laughter ringing in his ears.

That laugh. It was so vivid in his mind. No, it was real, maybe. But he was supposed to be alone. He looked over his shoulder, at the trees and clearings and boulders. There was no one there. He turned back and leaned over his knees to peer at his reflection in the lake. That jackass staring right back at him like he was the victim in all of this.

He found a couple of sturdy sticks and tied them together with a bit of thread from his clothes – made a make-shift cross which he stuck in the soft earth of the bank. He walked around for a while where there was grass, picking any flower he saw, or any plant that had some colour on it. She loved colour. He bundled them all up and put them at the base of the cross. Then he found as many pebbles as he could and spent the best part of an afternoon spelling out her name. It felt good for his peace of mind, like he was finally honouring her memory.

He’d taken some paper and a pen. He wanted to write something for her. He started with ‘Dear Mabel’ but then he stopped. He’d been going over all of the things he might say in his head for the past few hours, but now it all seemed so stupid and insincere. The only thing he was confident about putting down was ‘I’m so sorry’. And that’s all he wrote until it was evening – ‘I’m so sorry’s filled the pages until there was no room left.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember her, before Bill had ever corrupted her memory. How sweet she was, how funny, how courageous, how sociable, how adorable, how spontaneous and crazy she was. There were so many good things and so little bad things to her; it wasn’t hard to latch onto specific memories and relive them. Mabel had been such a huge part of his life from the moment he was born – no wonder he felt the ways that he did. They were twins after all. They had influenced each other all their lives, they had made each other. It was impossible for Dipper to go on without her, not because she was physically gone, but because she was always with him, in his memories and in all that he was. He felt warm.

“Well, well, well, well. What are we doing all the way out here, Big Dipper? You’re not indulging any _corny_ thoughts, are you?” Mabill was suddenly standing behind Dipper, a hand on his shoulder, gaping at the memorial he’d set up. “Wow! What a cute display! Is this what humans do to commemorate their dead?”

“Yeah,” he answered, staring back at Mabill. Bill. Not Mabel.

“Seems to me like it’s a poor effort. Want something a little more extravagant?” He clicked his fingers and the memorial became instantly engulfed in blue flames. Dipper found himself staring at a large marble statue of his smiling sister towering above him, the base adorned with all manner of bright flowers, and an engraving of her name in a plate of gold. “Now _that’s_ more like it!”

Dipper almost scoffed. He turned to stare at him. “I don’t understand you, Bill. Did you… ever actually want to help me? Or do you just hate me?”

“ _Whaaat_?” Mabill looked close to astonished. “Kid, I _never_ hated you. I don’t know where you got the idea from that I did!”

“Oh, you know.” Dipper smiled sarcastically. “Things you said. Things you did.”

“Listen, kid – I know I can be a bit much to deal with sometimes –”

“Try, all the time. And _too_ much to deal with.”

“OK, OK. But that’s just how I am, you see?” He spread his hands and smiled like he had nothing to hide, like he was free of guilt and blame. “I like to have fun with neurotic people like you. Besides, you humans are _far_ more resilient than you believe you are. And don’t forget that you took an interest in _me_ first _._ ”

“Yeah, I… should never have done that.” He put a hand protectively over the Journal 3 tucked into his jacket. He looked back at Mabill earnestly. “OK, so… you had your fun. You… butchered my sister’s pet, you tortured her body in front of me, turned my family and friends against me, you…” But he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t equate rape to Bill’s idea of fun. “And you took every chance to remind me it’s _all_ my fault she’s dead. Can’t you leave now?”

Mabill sighed, scratching beneath the long brown hair that hadn’t touched a comb in days. He looked puzzled, torn. “Wow, kid. When you put it all together like that, you make me out as some kind of sadistic maniac.” He stared at Dipper, but Dipper had no idea what he was expecting from him. He _was_ a sadistic maniac; Dipper wasn’t going to try to convince him he wasn’t. “I guess you really don’t like me hanging around anymore, huh?”

Dipper stared at him like that question didn’t even deserve an audible answer. It was so obvious to both of them, and Mabill slowly nodded.

“Well… If you say so, Big Dipper. Wanna drown me first?”

“Sure.”

“Wha?”

Dipper shoved him down the slopes and into the lake. He followed after him, wading into the cold water, and waited for Mabill to resurface with gasping breaths. Then he steeled himself, told himself again and again that it wasn’t his sister, and held Bill’s head down under the water.

There was a lot of thrashing, a lot of muted screaming. But Dipper didn’t take it to be real – Bill was just putting on a show, expecting to get another emotional collapse out of him. But he wouldn’t fall for the same trick again. He struggled to hold him even with both hands and Bill’s head shot up out of the water like a ball held under for too long. But when Bill took a breath to scream, it wasn’t his own voice, it was Mabel’s.

“ _Dipper, please!_ ” she cried, wet hair plastered across half her face. “ _Bro, help me! Help me!_ ”

Dipper pressed down on Bill until he was fully submerged again, and he tried to hold him there. He forced all of his weight on him, floating on him like his own survival depended on it. He could start to feel the body under him give up the fight and flood with water, sink even further down. Like a car.

_Not Mabel. Just Bill. Not Mabel. Just Bill. Just Bill. Just Bill._

He stopped holding down the body until it wasn’t Bill anymore. He let her slowly drift back up to bob at the surface, and he took her into his arms. He brushed the hair away from her pale face. For the first time in a week, she actually began to look like herself again. She looked an awful lot like she did when she had first drowned. And now she’d drowned again.

He couldn’t do this – but he was doing it. And he had no choice. He carried her up out of the water and pushed her body feebly onto the flat of the bank, beside her memorial that had reverted back to the sad stick cross and the already-withering flowers.

“Didn’t fall for it, then?”

Dipper looked up to see that familiar hovering triangle, meticulously donning his cane and top hat. It was almost relieving not to have to stare at that smile anymore. “No,” he murmured. “But you didn’t make it easy.”

“Things would be so boring if they were easy!”

He ignored Bill in favour of cradling his sister across his lap. He was so thankful to have her back to the way she was supposed to be. Having her lifeless in his arms was horrible, but it was nowhere near as traumatic as what he’d experienced over the past week or so.

“I can see you probably want some time alone with your sister, so _I’ll leave, like you asked._ ” Bill’s one eye rolled all the way around. “It’s been fun, kid. Maybe not for you, but _definitely_ for me. Keep good hold of your sister – miracles are known to occur once in a while, ya know! See you later, Big Dipperrrr!”

Dipper looked up just in time to be struck by the pale yellow and blue light his transcendent departure emitted. It was actually quite dark and cold without any light. It was getting quite late.

He looked back to her face. It looked a lot less pale than it had just been. Her body felt warmer too – had he been holding her for too long? He put a hand over her heart and his own stuttered and kicked into overdrive. A miracle? No. It couldn’t be. This wasn’t happening to him, after everything they’d both been through.

“Mabel?” he squeaked and she _actually stirred_ in his arms. He started to choke on the rush of tears. “ _Mmm-Mabel_? _Mabel, are you…_ ”

“Dip…” She rolled her head gently towards his voice. Her eyes twitched and pried open like she was using them for the first time in… a week. They were her normal colour. “Dipper?” she asked, voice quiet and weak. “Is… that…?”

Everything went dark. Mabel wasn’t in his arms. “No,” he said, hands scrambling around for her, a light switch, _anything._ “No. No. No, no, no, no, no, nonononnnn-”

When the light came back on it was accompanied by an alarm. He was on his back, on a bunk bed. He was holding a black marker pen to the scratched, metal underside of his juvenile inmate’s bunk bed above him. He had just written ‘ _Just kidding, kid_!’ and drawn a triangle with an eye in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao ok well thank you all for reading!


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